1. Technical Field
Several aspects of the present invention relates to an ink cartridge and a printing apparatus.
2. Related Art
A printing apparatus such as a printer for printing a recording medium such as a paper includes a carriage, which is loaded with an ink cartridge, and a droplet discharging head, i.e., a recording head supplied with ink from the ink cartridge in a loaded state where the ink cartridge is loaded into the carriage. The droplet discharging head can discharge the aforementioned supplied ink as a droplet toward the recording medium.
As this type of ink cartridge to be loaded into printing apparatuses, for example, such as disclosed in International Publication No. 01/54910 pamphlet has been known. This known ink cartridge is provided with an outlet through which the ink is supplied from the ink cartridge to a side of the printing apparatus in a loaded state.
With this known ink cartridge, however, where the ink filled in this ink cartridge is used up, there has been the fear that the used ink cartridge is refilled through the outlet with a counterfeit ink that a manufacture such as a maker of the known ink cartridge does not guarantee the quality. The ink cartridge filled with this counterfeit ink has been used in later phase. That is, this ink cartridge has been loaded into the printing apparatus to execute printing. In the case of reuse of the ink cartridge as described above, such a problem has arisen that, for example, a nozzle of the droplet discharging head is clogged with the ink, causing poor discharging of the ink from the nozzle, or leading to an inferior printing condition of the recording medium.